Archives for October 2016

Dr. Nicole Beurkens and I sit down together at the end of the recent Integrative Medicine for Mental Health conference to talk about anxiety and the impact of both low zinc and low GABA. Nicole shares her perspectives on working with children and I share what I see with the adult women I work with. We don’t specifically talk about older adults or men but it’s applicable to everyone.

My response to the zinc challenge: metallic, gross, horrible and I got goosebumps – – which means good zinc levels

Nicole shares that most of kids and young adults at her clinic have level 1 or level 2 zinc status, and it’s an easy test to do with kids

Many people at the conference were on zinc and were surprised they were not tasting the zinc sulfate. Other than sugar consumption, stress and exercise, low HCl (stomach acid) can affect your absorption. I also found that many of these folks were on a gluten-free or Paleo or GAPs diet and eating a lot of nuts or using nut flours. Nuts are high in copper and this can counteract the zinc.

We talk about the importance of good quality zinc supplements and finding a zinc product and multi that is copper-free. Here are the products I recommend.

It’s a lozenge/sublingual, is easy to take and helps in situations where the anxiety can quickly escalate into panic attacks. Nicole likes the peppermint flavor and finds many of the children and young adults she works with prefer the orange flavor. Personally I also prefer the orange flavor.

For adults, if you use wine at the end of the day to de-stress, you may be low in GABA and self-medicating, and using something like GABA-Calm often helps.

Moms will take their GABA Calm with them and use as needed and give to their kids if needed too.

GABA Calm can help when you’re on a benzodiazepine and even very severe anxiety or depression can be alleviated with diet and nutrients.

Nicole shares how common benzodiazepine prescriptions are in teens and young adults; and the issues with dependence and wanting to quit but not being able to. It can sometimes take years to reduce the medications.

We were both so encouraged being at this conference and seeing so many physicians, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, psychiatric nurse practitioners and others practitioners who are really interested in learning more about these approaches. They are seeing the same issues we see with some of the medications (and not getting to the root cause of anxiety) and they are excited to expand their knowledge base. It’s just so exciting to see the pendulum swinging!

We both really appreciate the Integrative Medicine for Mental Health conference. If you’re a practitioner and haven’t attended it’s a must-attend event. If you were there you know what I mean. It was also super to meet so many of you after my talk and at my booth. If you’re not a practitioner do tell your doctor about it. Save the date for 2017: September 28 – October 1 in Orange County, California.

We did this as a live video feed on Facebook hence the references to posting questions and Facebook. It was also the end of the event and the people next to us were packing boxes and using a lot of tape so apologies for the weird noises.

Feel free to share your results with zinc and GABA Calm and any questions you may have.